


Cillian Stands

by wrelicofwren



Category: Eric's TBD RPG
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-26
Updated: 2017-06-26
Packaged: 2018-11-19 04:11:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,470
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11305407
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wrelicofwren/pseuds/wrelicofwren
Summary: A fic for one of the favs. Cillian stands at the edge of the universe and watches it burn.





	Cillian Stands

Cillian stands at the edge of the universe and watches it burn.

The Citadel might have been beautiful once, he thinks, looking out at the ravaged capitol of Gallifrey as they fight through temporal guards to reach the centre of the city.

Once they’re past the first battalion, the Master asserts his belief that Rassilon will obviously be waiting somewhere called a ‘Panopticon’. Finn refused to remain in the TARDIS during this fight and Roko refused to remain in the TARDIS without Finn so they remain close to Cillian -Meatstick as well- as they try to find where Rassilon has stored the paradox energies. Cillian isn’t sure where they’re going but he can almost sense it, a faint tug in the back of his mind guiding him toward something. 

What they come across is Rassilon himself, holding a basketball-sized sphere, but Cillian knows that things are typically larger than they appear when it comes to Gallifreyan technology. 

What happens after that is a mess of gunfire and contradiction. Cillian spends every bit of his strength learning a game that Rassilon cheats at expertly. His friends are suddenly there, then not, then there again. Fifty temporal guards flood the room and open fire, and Cillian removes some of them from this existence. Rassilon declares himself bored and, with his armoured hand aglow, he breaks open the sphere. Cillian braces for pandemonium as best he can as it rains shards of glass and metal, purple grass springing forth from a fleshy ceiling and a river of fire rising from the floor to meet it. The explosion of concentrated paradox causes an enormous tear to streak open, one that stretches up, out of the ceiling and into the sky itself. 

A rift to swallow all of Gallifrey. “Jesus,” he gapes up at the cloud-bound rip that keeps expanding. 

Finn thrusts her shield out to protect him as he tries to close it, but it’s unlike anything he’s ever seen. This one calls to him, trying to pull him in the more he imposes his will onto it. The forces at work only seem to affect him though, Roko grabbing for him and grounding him as his shoes slide against the floor. He holds his ground with their help, knitting the universe back together slowly until Finn’s shield is broken by a blast from a Dalek gunstick. And he gets distracted because there shouldn’t be any living Daleks, he’s heard. Roko suddenly drops at his side and Cillian is swept off his feet by the rift, just in time to hear Finn scream wildly. He struggles to find purchase on anything that will stop him being drawn closer and closer to the swirling vortex but there’s nothing to grab.

The Doctor isn’t there and _he falls into forever-_

The Doctor is there, hand extended and voice pleading for him. Cillian reaches up and takes it. Hands still joined, they close the tear together and then they run from Daleks until he can’t anymore, the smouldering ruins of Rassilon’s sphere and empire behind them. 

The machine is destroyed but Rassilon still lives. That alone is unfair. 

Cillian is exhausted, thoroughly burnt out. The Doctor asks if he’s alright, but he can’t muster the strength for words. All he can do is breathe, his trembling hands braced against his knees, as the ringing in his ears grows louder and the ground gets closer. A singed metal arm reaches for him, looping around his back before he falls and they scramble into the TARDIS. Deposited in the console chair, he hardly has a moment to reflect before Zeeps bounds up the stairs from somewhere in the TARDIS.

He opens his mouth, and then closes it, taking in their states and obviously fewer numbers. “What happened?” Zeeps asks with a quiet dread, the need to know clearly overwhelming him. 

Cillian stands at the precipice of a darkness he has never felt before.

Jack hasn’t returned yet, lost somewhere to a time they don’t know due to a well-aimed shot at his vortex manipulator mid-jump. Roko, River, Meatstick and the Master didn’t make it off of Gallifrey alive and something in Cillian strains in outrage and anguish at how wrong it feels. Finn is silent, staring into empty space with a tight jaw and even tighter fists. Zeeps doesn’t ask anything more, hovering at the side of the console and watching the Doctor power through heartbreak to pilot them away. Something went awry - it also goes awry, but not like this.

“I can fix this,” he whispers, lifting his still shaking hands. The remnants of paradox energies snake between his fingers, visible even to him. The Doctor freezes across from him, barely grasping at her own pain as she looks into his eyes. 

“No, you can’t,” she breathes, the sounds catching in her throat. Finn walks away at that, her footfalls heavy as she marches deeper into the TARDIS. Zeeps, at a loss, looks at them both warily before trailing after her. 

“Doctor, I just- if I do it right…” 

She sighs, and his stomach lurches anxiously. “Cillian, you can’t. I know how you’re feeling, but you can’t just change the things you think aren’t good enough.” 

He wants to tell her that he thinks he has. Having been in that room with Rassilon for what might have been a minute or a year, he wants to say that this might be the hundredth reality they’ve travelled through together. “Why not?” he asks instead, because he ~~remembers~~ imagines the horror in her eyes at that revelation and he isn’t ready.

“The fact that you’re even asking that after we’ve just fought Rassilon, the person who nearly destroyed everything with thoughts like that!” The Doctor can’t help but shake her head, and for all his ability, Cillian feels like a child before her. The TARDIS whirrs noisily in the space between them, an ever-present witness, and Cillian drops his head in a nod.

“I understand. I’m sorry, Doctor.” Yes, he understood. But did that mean he had to accept it? A hand rests gently on his upper arm, and he looks up into the solemn face of a time lord who knows loss better than he could dream.

“This day has been awful, for all of us. You did brilliantly, and I didn’t mean to yell at you. You are _nothing_ like Rassilon.” When Cillian doesn’t say anything in response, she pats his arm, and falls just short of a proper smile. “We all need some time. You need to rest, and I need to check on Finn.”

The Doctor decides to leave him for the time being. The lights of the console pulse comfortingly, and Cillian clasps his hands together, thumbs pressed to his lips. “You can hear me, right?” he says to the recently vacated control room, “Roko… said they spoke to you, before. I don’t know how this works, but you do. You know more than I ever will.” Eyes burning, he turns up to the wheezing, pulsating cylinder in the centre. “I think you would stop me if you could. And if you can’t stop me, then please help me. Please.” There’s nothing for a long moment, and then?

A click. The doors to the TARDIS unlock, one side whipping open as they are still in motion.

Cillian stands and gazes at an endlessness he cannot comprehend but has to. He has to.

The time vortex is petrifying, not unlike the giant rips they’d healed before, but so much more. And there he was, a human, staring into all of time and space and he didn’t have a clue of what to do with it. The blue wisps of energy surrounding his hands drift outward into the ether, but Cillian hangs on, pulling them back into him. More follow after, and shock blooms across his face. 

Now he knows. He braces himself against the doorframe of the TARDIS and drags the raw energy of paradox from the fabric of reality, laughing in terrified glee as it comes to him. It feels good, better than good, it feels _incredible_. He isn’t sure he can stop.

“What are you-!” The Doctor cries behind him, returning a little too late to prevent him doing this. 

“Forgive me,” he mumbles, closing his eyes as the winds of time storm and paradox swarms around him.

“ **Cillian, stop!** ” the Doctor shouts, distinct and distant against his still ringing ears.

The echo of a moment he recognizes. “ **Cillian, stop!** ” Once he hears it, he reaches out, the tides of time resisting his interference.

He breaks through into a tiny pocket of hell, lined with floating organs. Every sound is muddled and warped by adrenaline, but he hears retching and shifts to watch the tail end of Roko being sick on the floor. Roko, who’s being supported by a Finn who quietly asks if they’re okay. Roko, who is _still alive._

“Cillian, what have you done!” The Doctor says, voice raising in alarm. But he can’t move his gaze from them, and the sudden, warm tear that slips down his cheek startles him into speaking.

“I-I don’t know,” he lies. There’s something off but he can’t think what, he’s so glad to see them. Roko had always been with them, since the beginning, but he didn’t know how much that mattered to him until they weren’t there. He might’ve stared longer than appropriate if alarms hadn’t begun to blare.

He waits for Jack to pull up his arm with a flourish and volunteer to get them out-

Jack isn’t there and he needs to be. 

Jack is the one to get them out, yes, but more than that. Jack calls him a name that he can’t stand but becomes fond of. Sometimes Jack is annoying, sometimes Jack is right, and sometimes Jack makes Cillian flush and bluster unexpectedly. He’s the last one Cillian meets before the end. So he has to _be there_ and when he isn’t, Cillian inhales and _makes it right-_

“-an immense amount of power that no one is supposed to have!” Jack comes into being at the Doctor’s side as though he’d always been there and Cillian exhales.

It’s so much easier than he remembers it being. He laughs once, mind spinning at the power he now controls. There’s no chance to dwell, however, Jack whisking them away to a new, fresh nightmare filled with metal men.

In the safety of the TARDIS, they catch their breath, except for Jack who’s been escalating in volume since he arrived. “Doctor, so what reality are we in? What, and where are we going?”

Cillian chimes in instead, “I wish we could answer that, but we don’t really know because _I_ don’t know. All I did was reverse ~~one~~ thing!“ 

“Look, _Sparky_ ,” Jack points at him irreverently and Cillian almost smiles, happy to hear it again. The conversation blurs around him as memories spin back into their newest forms. He can’t remember what he said or should say exactly, what his words might mean to this reality.

“Can you undo it?” River asks him minutes later as they speed away from hundreds of cybermen/ daleks/ some indomitable creature that decided to claim the Earth this time. For a moment he isn’t sure what she means. This is much better than where he was before. But Cillian’s head is pounding, the future being remodelled by this version of the present and _this time-_

Cillian un-does too much, the power of the time vortex within him overclocking and overcooking the fragile mechanism that holds time and space together. _He un-does it ALL at once._

And they’re gone. There is him and nothing else. He is alone in the void of a world unmade by his hand, his wants, his desire to please, to try, to help. 

White silence surrounds him, shakes him, and consumes him for he is endlessly alone. 

This wasn’t what he wanted. This is not acceptable. Take it back. **Take it all back!**

His fingers knot into the curls of his hair and he screams into the negative space until the nothingness splinters into cracks of paradoxical nonsense around him and he is not alone. _Cillian re-does it ALL at once._

Everything begins to fall apart.

Cillian stands, staring into a tear in the fabric of space-time and quakes as staring back are infinite ripples of Cillian, Cillian, _Cillian, CillianCillian **Cilli-**_

“Cillian!” Finn’s shout ricochets across a tear and he flinches. She’s holding on fiercely to the Doctor’s screwdriver and a disturbingly limp Roko, the passion in her eyes giving way to slight panic. He sees the shadow of tall, jackal-headed creatures, their heads pointed upward to praise a god that would devour them. Vellig holds Blue Death high in the belly of the future Sontar, barrel smoking as he looks down at a dead Meatstick-

(He is not a god but all things move in his favour if he wills it, _and he does_ )-

Vellig holds Blue Death high in the belly of future Sontar, barrel smoking as he looks down at a _wounded_ Meatstick. 

(Vellig changes and so dies instead, later. Cillian is not a god and doesn’t understand why he can never have them both.)

No, he has to stop changing it. He’ll die if he doesn’t. His head is killing him and his sanity is slipping like sand through his fingers. 

Paradox warps around him, seeking its own. “Focus on the tear. Try to close it.” The Doctor says too calmly, staring into the face of Rassilon. Cillian gasps, struggling to keep up with when and where he is. The Corsair is nowhere to be seen and the bodies of temporal guards litter the ground of the Gul-hoki death trap masquerading as a bank vault. 

Cillian glances at possibility, at infinity, and chooses this new experience of all others. For all its mistakes, for all its conceivable pain, he thinks this one to be right. Hope thrives on possibility, after all.

The many form one. The agony slows. Cillian breathes.

Cillian stands in the face of paradox, knowing and not knowing the consequences of closing the rips, the chaos he will bring. 

Has brought? 

Is currently bringing? 

His mind is a flux of thoughts he can’t fathom, and so he begins to forget his future. For the better, he hopes. 

God, he’s just an electrician, and this is extraordinary. But he’s here and he can do something, even if he isn’t sure of the price he’ll pay. He accepts that he can maybe change this world if he’d let himself. And that sounds _incredible_.

He nods, “Okay,” and wonders how badly this could go if he gets it wrong. But what else can he do?

Cillian stands before the beginning and the end of everything and tries anyway.

**Author's Note:**

> What was that about? A Cillian of another reality making some poor choices. 
> 
> Fun fact: I wrote this story pretty much backwards, so you have ended where I began. And that is very cathartic for me in a Doctor Who story. 
> 
> Thanks for reading!


End file.
